Friday, April 20, 2012

Update :)

Life is crazy. I haven't blogged since late 2009. I would say I am somewhat disappointed in myself but I should give myself some credit. I started community college in January 2010 when my son was 6 months old. I somehow managed to juggle being a mom, a wife, and *sort of* kept up with my horse hobby. In August 2011 I finally found a job and then finished all of my classes in November while working 32 hours a week. It was a little rough at times but I managed to maintain a 4.0 gpa and should be receiving all 3 of my certificates this summer.
As life has slowed down a tiny bit, I have been trying to make more time for my horse. Sometimes I am successful and get out to the barn to ride 4 times a week. Most often though I make it to the barn twice a week and ride one or two of those times depending on how full my schedule is. Luckily, Summer has a pretty cushy existence at her current barn. She has about an acre and a half or so pasture attached to a 12x24 stall. A small creek runs through her pasture with some big beautiful oak trees towards the back. It's so nice I kind of wish I could move in with her. She almost lives the life of a semi-retired horse and I can tell she loves every minute of it.
Our working relationship has been getting better, and I really feel like we "get" each other. I have been trying to do a lot of new things with her and we are still trying to figure out what our one thing is. She has definitely let me know Western Pleasure is not something she enjoys and that she much prefers something that keeps her brain active and is constantly challenging her. She loves cow work, and trail riding is definitely something we love to do. Briefly we explored getting into mounted shooting and I found that she had no problem with a gun being shot off of her but that the hobby itself would be much too expensive than we could afford at this point. In the last few months we have discovered reining. While she may not ever be perfect at it, it does seem to keep her mind constantly working. Back in February we attended our first clinic ever with Shane Steffen for beginning reining and cow work. We actually did really well and left feeling like it was something we could both do. So in the weeks since, I have been working on her stop, back, haunch turns, and forehand turns. I have even managed to get a halfway decent spin out of her. Tonight is our first lesson with Shane since the clinic and I am super excited to show off what we have been working on and see how we can improve from here.
Hopefully, I can start blogging more. I would love to be able to write about how I am feeling about where we are going and what some of my goals are. Maybe I will even get some feedback on occasion......

Summer enjoying some brief sunshine in February